1.
Earlier contributions to
the debate by women in Italian include: Moderata Fonte, The Worth
of Women (1600) (this work is almost contemporaneous with
Marinella's The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects
and Vices of Men), Tullia D'Aragona, Dialogue on the Infinity
of Love (1547) (Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, trans.
and eds. Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry, University of Chicago
Press, 1997), Laura Cereta's epistolary essays in response to Boccaccio
(~1488) (Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist, trans.
and ed. Diana Robin, University of Chicago Press, 1997), and Isotta
Nogarola, Dialogue on the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve
(1451) (Complete Writings: Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and
Eve, and Orations, trans. and eds. Margaret L. King and Diana
Robin, University of Chicago Press, 2003).

2.
For the view that ensouled
beings are better than those without souls, see Aristotle,
Generation of Animals 2.1. For Pizan's argument, see
The Book of the City of Ladies, 1.9.2. Agrippa says,
“Woman is superior to man by reason of the material of her creation,
because she was made not from something inanimate, not from vile clay
as man was, but from a purified material, endowed with life and soul, I
mean a rational soul, sharing the divine intelligence,” (50, Rabil
trans. modified).